Monday, 14 November 2011

Room Update

At the start of the year I decided to redecorate my room, which at the time seemed like a great idea. In reality it's meant spending all spare my money and time on things for it for the last 8 months. I'm so glad I've persevered though because it's really starting to take shape now. My boyfriend and I spent a while looking at colours and ideas, neither of us had put up wallpaper or coving before so we decided that we'd probably be able to put it up between us. Luckily, we could!

I wish I'd have taken more pictures of how my room used to look (bang on the door pink/bathroom paint green alternate walls with a pink painted chest of drawers and a HUGE frosted glass wardrobe that was so big it restricted the door opening! I had a lot of things in my room but no practical storage so it was constantly messy) so I could really see the transformation, but it's been a total change -the only thing I've not replaced is my bed so you can imgaine the work that's been involved.

It's taken all year to save up for bits and pieces, buying and adding to it bit by bit so after the final lick of paint this weekend, I can see it's all coming together now. Here's a few pictures taken at different stages, it's so nice to look back and see how things have progressed.

Sorry for the awful quality pictures, picture 1 was taken after we'd spent a whole day moving furniture and painting the walls. Picture 2 was the next day after we'd wallpapered!

A few weeks later we bought this gorgeous ceiling light, it's so beautiful but it was a bugger to put up!

I wanted a tv stand but I didn't have a lot of room to put one, so when my boyfriend spotted this in Ikea, I knew it was perfect and had to get it. The baskets and boxes are from Ikea also.

The next project was putting up coving. With my Carol Vorderman math skills and my boyfriend's beefcake strength, we managed to cove 3/4 of the room.

My birthday was in May and instead of prezzies for me, I asked my family to chip in for a few things for my room because I'd spent far too much money on it already and had none left to get any further. My lovely boyfriend bought me my chest of drawers (which I haven't taken a picture of, silly me-one to follow), my sister bought me my bedside table and my parents and grandad gave me some pennies which I splashed out on a Laura Ashley blanket i'd had my eye on for months.

I've found out through experience that Ikea things look lovely, but gosh, you need the patience of a Saint to assemble them!

I bought new bedding from BHS to match my lovely blanket, I really wanted the Imogen duvet set from Laura Ashley but It was a few too many pennies :(

By this time I was tired of decorating and annoyed that all my money was being spent on things for my room. I was missing buying shoes and lipsticks so I took a break from it all and had a rest to regroup and think of some new ideas. (Also I had a HUGE heavy wardrobe that took up so much space on the other side of my room that I knew needed to be dismantled and I couldn't gather the energy to take it down. Note to self:choosing to ignore something doesn't make it go away, just means you have to live with a big ol' wardrobe for a few months until you do take it down haha) so I lived in my half blue half pink room for a few months in ignorant bliss.

My car was on it's last legs in July and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to take ownership of a sporty little Micra. It all happened so quickly that when I had a flash thought that I needed to get a new wardrobe, that I wanted one from the same range as my chest of drawers from Ikea, which meant buying it THAT NIGHT before my car goes tomorrow as it wont fit in the Micra! So off the boy and I toddled to Ikea, lugging a lovely but very heavy wardrobe home and having to carry it up the stairs in pieces because we couldn't physically lift the boxes it came in! There it sat, propped up against the wall for a few more months while I happily carried on in my little bubble. Life gets in the way sometimes and you have to get your priorities right, decorating wasn't on my to do list for a while.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, the boy decided that we'd put it off for far too long and that we needed to pick up where we left off. I relucantly agreed.

We managed to dismantle the old wardrobe in a few hours and put up the new one all in a day! But because the old wardrobe was so big, we couldn't move it to paint behind or cove the ceiling above it, so this weekend was spent running backwards and forwards to Homebase to buy new paint rollers and more coving glue (as we found out on Sunday that our had dried up) to paint the rest of my room and finishing off the coving.

before/after

So that's all 4 walls painted, all the coving put up and we're very nearly finished! The coving will need a quick paint to conceal the joins but that wont take long and can wait for another weekend.

I have a few lovely little decorative things dotted about my room already, but I'm starting to put together a mood board of things that i'd like to get which I'll post up once i've picked a few things.

I hope you like my room and if you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave me a comment :)